Page 728 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
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of 1974. It was formally established in 1977. It introduced a revolution in education. It was unquestionably a marvellous change from what was then a stilted and stifled New South Wales system. It developed a range of principles that were a model for the rest of Australia. The new system was to be fully autonomous and self-directing under a distant Commonwealth Minister. It would draw its energy through the participation of an empowered, interested, informed and active community. In turn, it would devolve significant autonomy to schools and their local communities. School management, school decision making and, most importantly, curricular development would be the responsibility of parents, teachers and, indeed, at the upper secondary level of students. They all shared in those tasks. How well did this wonderful design work? Very well I believe, though I do add that a number of problems have tended to be submerged under the general praise.
Let me look at the various aspects of the new system. A statutory body was established to administer education; it did so effectively for more than 10 years. Inevitably there were difficulties and frustrations, but in all the praise that is often said about the authority let us not overlook the fact that it encountered very significant difficulties. It was supposed to be autonomous, but how autonomous was it? I quote from an early and very authoritative study which argued that the authority or the council of the authority did not have actual power over the direction of many aspects of education policy or over administration of this policy. That was due, and the fact would be somewhat the same today with some differences, to a number of external agencies, and other factors - external factors that impinged on the authority of the council. There were also very significant internal constraints. There was a constant complaint over the life of the authority from members of the council of the authority that power and information, in particular, remained with the bureaucrats.
I say this to Mr Humphries openly if I can, and to the rest of this Assembly, not in any sense of criticism of what happened then, but in the knowledge that we need to understand these things. You can give power to a body, but it is never absolute power, is it? It is always a constrained power. I do not think that was always recognised in respect of the Schools Authority. So I have no doubt then that the return to the autonomy indicated by the Chief Minister will, no doubt, be a limited autonomy which raises the question of how much influence the public can ever have.
What is the public's share of the participation that we are all so keen about? This is a matter that I paid great attention to at some stages in my life in the authority. It is questionable if there is ever much more power, if there is ever much more participation than is available through the normal means of communication and consultation
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